Tuesday 16 August 2011 11.22 EDT
First published on Tuesday 16 August 2011 11.22 EDT

"There are moments when I wake up and read the newspapers and think: 'I tell you what, you do the fighting and I'll do the talking'." This was David Cameron responding to comments from top navy and RAF officers suggesting they could not continue coping with the demands being placed on them.

They were intervening publicly in the running dispute over the defence budget as British jets and ships were daily bombing targets in Libya. Not long before, Cameron had brushed aside concerns expressed privately by the defence chiefs on the wisdom of embarking on the Libya adventure.

His intervention raises the most serious question, far too often avoided because of its delicate constitutional implications, of when and how should the heads of the armed forces confront their political masters.

One of the many tragedies of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - the latter in particular - is the reluctance of the service chiefs, and notably the army's generals, to warn ministers of the problems ahead. That they didn't, and the reasons why not, are explored in a extremely timely book published today. In Losing Small Wars, British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan (Yale University Press) , former intelligence officer Frank Ledwidge catalogues the failings and mistakes surrounding those two hopelessly unplanned and misconceived operations.

The failure to foresee, even to contemplate, the disasters provoked by the invasion of Iraq have been well documented, not least in evidence to the Chilcot inquiry. General Jonathan Shaw told Chilcot that Basra was "Palermo rather than Beirut", a comparison dismissed by Ledwidge, as "nothing more than self-delusion". Yet the generals did not heed any of the lessons, and they did not properly prepare their troops, before agreeing to deploy thousands to Helmand in 2006. They failed to do so because they were so desperate to wipe out the memories of southern Iraq, and try and restore their reputation especially among the US military.

They were also worried about what government ministers might be thinking. "The approach taken by senior British commanders", Ledwidge writes, "reflected more of what might be called a 'Yes, Prime Minister' culture than the required application of professional critical thought, let alone a will actively to challenge their masters". He quotes the observation by General Andrew Mackay who left the army prematurely soon after commanding British troops in Helmand, that senior officers allowed themselves to be "too acquiescent in rolling over to political bidding".

As a result, commanders resorted to the army's traditional "crack on" culture, charging in, ill-equipped and under-resourced, the prospect of medals their just reward. Ledwidge quotes from a 2009 study by the Royal United Services Institute which produced an extraordinarily telling statistic - a survey of more than a hundred army and Royal Marine middle-ranking officers showed that over a fifth - 27% - did not know what their government wished to achieve in Afghanistan or what their role was there.

Ledwidge says he has "no hesitation in calling the high command of the armed forces to account for...nothing less than dereliction of duty" He adds: "Yet no senior officer has been held to account; none has been dismissed; none has resigned; none has been removed from his position".

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, Britain's former ambassador in Kabul, has described the military's briefings as "misleadingly optimistic", adding: "Officials and ministers who questioned them were acciused of being defeatist or disloyal in some way". Tony Blair told Chilcot that "the very first thing is I ask the military for their view, and in their view in this instance [Iraq] was that they were up for doing it and that they preferred being right at the centre of things".

General Sir David Richards, the chief of defence staff, has called for more "strategic thinking", notably in the National Security Council set up by Cameron immediately after he took office last year. Ledwidge quotes the maxim that strategy "is the art of matching ends and means". With more than a hint of cockiness,

Cameron says he has "robust" discussions with Richards and his top brass. So far, they have shed more heat than light. Certainly there is no evidence that any of the strategic discussions, so vital for the future shape of Britain's armed forces and which Richards says he wants, has taken place.